NZ: The search for our oil and gas

The biggest offshore oil and gas drilling effort New Zealand has seen is about to begin.

Rogue icebergs roaming rough South Island waters, where the government hopes to lure the biggest names in world oil, loom as the smallest hurdles in the search for new oil and gas.

More critical by far will be finding oil rigs sufficient to probe the huge areas of ocean around New Zealand being given over to explorers.
This time last year, just under 81,000sq km of ocean had been permitted to oil companies, much of it in the offshore Taranaki Basin which has provided New Zealand with its natural gas over the past 40 years.

In the past 12 months, oil companies have been given a further 147,000sq km of ocean to explore. That’s a near 200% increase in short time.

Stuff